


i wasn't lettin' up until the day he died

by N_Is_For_Knowledge



Category: A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket
Genre: Alternate Universe- No VFD, Based on a Taylor Swift Song, Multi, Murder, Murder Mystery, but i picture this taking place in one of those small towns where everyone knows everyone, i know they're all canonically city kids, in which beatrice commits a murder because honestly she deserves it, specifically no body no crime
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:15:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28438248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/N_Is_For_Knowledge/pseuds/N_Is_For_Knowledge
Summary: "'No body, no crime,' Beatrice says jokingly, but she knows that Kit’s right. Beatrice has never trusted Olaf since he came back into town.'There’s no doubt about it. You know, I think I’m gonna call him out. Just walk right into his room and scream at him.' Kit smiles at the thought."Beatrice solves a murder, mourns a friend, and disposes a body.
Relationships: Beatrice Baudelaire & Kit Snicket, Beatrice Baudelaire & Lemony Snicket, Beatrice Baudelaire/Lemony Snicket (Past), Count Olaf/Esmé Squalor, Count Olaf/Kit Snicket
Comments: 5
Kudos: 16





	i wasn't lettin' up until the day he died

**Author's Note:**

> so yeah i listened to no body no crime by taylor swift and my imagination went haywire

Beatrice has known Kit Snicket her whole life.

It’s difficult to say how Beatrice and Kit have gone from best friends to slightly less close friends who meet up every Thursday at Olive Garden, but it probably has to do with adulthood and their increasingly packed schedules. In any case, those Thursday nights often serve as a time to relax.

Not this time.

Kit is frantic from the moment she enters the restaurant, fingers twisting, toes tapping. When they’re both seated, food ordered and wine served, she leans in and says, “I think Olaf’s cheating on me.”

Olaf is a complicated subject. He grew up here with the rest of them, moved out because he “wanted his own life” and they were “dragging him down”, and moved back in with matches in his pocket, a sudden growth spurt, and an infatuation with Kit that she had reciprocated wholeheartedly. They got married two weeks later.

“Really?”

“He goes out for a few hours and comes back with lipstick stains on his brand new ascot? I don’t think there’s another explanation for that.”

“You sure?”

“No, I’m positive. Look at this.” She pulls out some papers from her large purse. “I got these from the bank. He’s buying jewelry on our joint account, and it sure as hell isn’t for me.”

“No body, no crime,” Beatrice says jokingly, but she knows that Kit’s right. Beatrice has never trusted Olaf since he came back into town.

“There’s no doubt about it. You know, I think I’m gonna call him out. Just walk right into his room and scream at him.” Kit smiles at the thought.

Beatrice takes a sip of wine. “If you’re in a screaming mood.”

“Oh, I’m definitely in a screaming mood.”

Kit leaves that night with a “Wish me luck”, a promise to tell her how it goes by next Thursday, and a kiss on the cheek.

Beatrice wishes her luck.

Pity that it ends up not being enough.

-

_one week later_

-

Beatrice twists a napkin between her hands. She’d been waiting for almost an hour, and Kit had still not arrived.

“Waiting for someone?”

Oh, right. Must be a waitress. “Yes, actually.”

“It’s the Snicket girl, right? She comes in with you every week.”

Beatrice splutters. “Wh- what? Have you been watching us?"

“Nothin’ else to do around here. Anyway, you’d better pack up and leave, she’s not comin’ in anytime soon.”

She says “Why so?” and immediately regrets it. She’s probably cursed herself to be subject to this waitress’s gossip for all of eternity.

“Haven’t ya heard? Husband reported her missing just the other night.”

Beatrice stiffens, her mind running through every possibility. 

“Can I take these breadsticks to go?”

-

When she rings the doorbell (custom-programmed to play one of Olaf’s asinine compositions) at Kit and Olaf’s house, he meets her at the door with false words and painted-on bags under his eyes.

“I’ve barely slept,” he tells her. “I’ve been so worried,” as if that explains the lipstick mark on his neck. Hearing Kit say it is one thing, but seeing it herself is a whole other ballgame.

“So it’s true?”

“Yes. She’s gone.” Olaf raises his hands to his eyes, the way he did back in theatre class in school because he could never cry on command. “My Kit’s gone.”

It all feels so fake that Beatrice wants to laugh.

“My condolences.”

The charade is suffocating. She gets the fuck out of that house as soon as possible.

As she walks, she thinks. As a thought forms in her head, a little sliver of a thing, she stops being distraught at Kit’s disappearance and starts being angry.

Brand new tires on his shitty convertible in the driveway, like someone had slashed them.

His crocodile tears and false sympathy.

The announcement that one Esmé Genevieve had moved into his house, so soon after she disappeared (so soon after she died).

And as a thought forms in her head, so does a plan.

-

The first part of her plan is to find an accomplice. Every good murder mystery has one. She’s running down her short list of people she could trust, thinking and thinking until she decides on one person.

And that’s why she’s standing at the front of the Snicket Manor (capitalization of “manor” is non-negotiable) and saying hello when Kit’s younger brother comes to answer the door.

She knows Lemony well (perhaps too well, after a relationship that ended disastrously after he proposed on New Year’s Eve). He has always distrusted Olaf, always thought he did not deserve to marry his beloved sister.

He greets her at the door with red eyes and wet cheeks. Right. If she was the type to wallow in her grief, Lemony was the type to drown in it.

Good thing anger is a hell of a life preserver.

He ushers her to a pair of overstuffed armchairs, sits her down with tea and cookies, and she spills everything to him, from that dinner a week ago to her meeting with Olaf.

“So you think that-”

“Yes.”

“And you want me to, what, help you get him arrested?”

“No body, no crime. There’s no evidence. And you know we can’t trust the police.”

“Then what? We can’t just sit here knowing Olaf’s going to get off scot-free.”

Beatrice allows herself to smile, sharp and dangerous. “Well, I was thinking…”

-

The rest of the week is spent planning and plotting. When Beatrice isn’t at the Snicket Manor, she’s walking down the street or brewing coffee, mind running through possible options. If she allows her mind to wander, it heads right back to lipstick stains on necks and bloody bedrooms and ugly sobs. 

Best to focus on what she needs to do.

She sees Jacques pass her in the Manor’s twisting halls sometimes, curt and polite. If he knows what they’re planning, he never asks.

“But the thing is, how are we to dispose of the body? It’ll be incredibly incriminating, I don’t particularly want to go to jail.”

“Burn it?”

“Too uncontrolled. We might end up burning the house down, and I don’t know about you, but I’m rather attached to this place.”

“Do you have any suggestions or are you just going to veto everything I say?”

Lemony leans back in his chair and frowns. “I think we should throw him in the lake.”

Beatrice considers it. “That sounds like a good idea. Remember when Jo and I both got boating licenses back in high school? We can go out to the deepest part of the lake and drop him off there.”

Lemony snickers. “‘Drop him off’. You make it sound like we’re leaving him at the movie theater or something.”

“Shut up, Lem.”

-

As Beatrice stands on the eye-patterned doormat, waiting for Olaf to open the door and let her in, she mentally quintuple-checks if she has everything.

Nitrile gloves? Check.

Several large bags? Check.

Kit’s old 10-pound atlas? Check.

Confirmation that Esmé Genevieve was at the mall in the city and wouldn’t arrive for hours? Check.

Knife? Check.

The door opens with a creak, and she arranges a kind smile on her face just as Olaf places a distraught expression on his.

Showtime.

“Olaf! I was just in to check on you, make sure you haven’t drunk yourself into despair, that sort of thing.” The joke comes easy, naturally. Beatrice knows Olaf is far too happy to drink himself into despair.

“Very funny, Beatrice. I actually have a roommate now, you know. She’s been helping keep me afloat.”

She nearly laughs. _Roommate._ It’s asinine.

She steps forward. He steps back.

“Oh, a roommate? That’s very nice of you. How do you know her?”

“Met her back when I lived in the city. We’re good friends.”

She hums. “That’s nice.” They’ve known each other for a while. Beatrice doesn’t know if that makes it better or worse.

“It is.”

They chat amicably for a few more minutes, about Kit, but also about Esmé and plays and the weather and nothing in particular. Carrying Kit’s atlas in her bag has made her arms ache. She wants this conversation to be over with.

She grunts and attempts to pull the bag back up.

“What on earth are you carrying in there, Bea? Boulders?”

She pulls out the atlas, and before he can notice it, hits him hard in the head. He falls to the floor with a _thump_.

Beatrice smiles at the sight, before pulling on her gloves and getting to work.

-

Now she lugs a large suitcase, which holds a small icebox, which holds the corpse of her former friend, wrapped in plastic like a chicken bought from the store. It is even heavier than the atlas. She can’t wait to throw him away.

Lemony is waiting for her at the docks. They’d rented the boat in advance. It had been extremely easy, apart from the boat rental assistant talking about what a nice couple they were, and how she’d give them the coziest, most romantic boat. 

As she steps inside the cabin, she decides not to complain about the “most romantic” bit. It certainly was comfortable.

She walks out to the deck, feeling the cool fall breeze whip her hair around. She breathes in and out. Best not to think too hard about what she has just done, what she needs to do.

When they’re finally out at the deepest part of the lake, she calls Lemony from the cabin. He comes out holding the atlas. “This is the book you used to knock him out, right?”

“Mm-hm.”

“Nice.”

The first thing she learns about disposing of a body is that they’re surprisingly light _._ Olaf falls overboard easily and sinks like a stone, bringing to mind how they used to skip rocks on the shallower parts of the lake, her and Olaf and Kit.

Fuck, _Kit._

“Do you think Olaf put Kit’s body here? After he-” There’s a lump in her throat and an urge to start crying. “After he killed her?”

“Well, that would be ironic.” Lemony’s voice is soft, and Beatrice worries that he’s going to burst into tears again. 

“Yeah, it would.” She slips her gloves off and places a rock inside each one, before throwing them into the lake.

“Isn’t that littering?”

“Lemony, we literally just killed a man.”

And there it is. They just killed a man. _She_ just killed a man, and she pushes down the regret and the tears with a near-mantra of _he killed Kit he deserved it he deserved it he killed Kit he deserved it._

“Hold on, let me get one thing.”

“At least get rid of your gloves first.”

He sighs dramatically. “If you insist, Beatrice Baudelaire, murderess extraordinaire.”

“If you call me a murderess one more time, your body _will_ be the next one I’ll be dumping into the lake.”

“That’s the spirit,” he says, before throwing away his gloves and heading back into the cabin, leaving Beatrice alone on the deck with her thoughts.

She breathes, in and out. If she closes her eyes, the air almost tastes like blood.

-

The cabin is pleasantly warm, and Lemony is cooking some pasta on the small stove that the boat apparently came with.

“I already started on dinner, so would you be okay with staying here? Or do you want to head back to the mainland?”

“What are you making?” 

“Spaghetti.”

“Let’s stay. Just don’t pull any Lady and the Tramp shit with me and we’re good.”

Lemony laughs so hard he nearly spills the tomato sauce. Beatrice allows herself to pretend that they’re just two friends out for a relaxing night on the lake. 

After a few minutes, the spaghetti is plated, and they’re sitting at a small, rickety table (that boat rental assistant mistaking them for a couple is really paying off now), deep in a discussion of… vehicular manslaughter?

Yes, vehicular manslaughter. Apparently, when the mind wanders, it wanders to even more painful, gruesome ways Olaf could have died.

“I’m just saying, it would have been perfect if we ran him over with the taxi! Excellent weaponization of irony, right there.”

“I’m not saying it wouldn’t have been perfect in a metaphorical sense! I’m just saying that there’s no way we’d be able to do it! All the roads are public, how would we explain the blood all over the pavement?”

“Roadkill?”

Beatrice groans. “That much blood? From roadkill? Squirrels aren’t that large.”

“Perhaps it’s a particularly large squirrel.” Lemony glances down at his plate. “Can we stop talking about roadkill? The spaghetti turned out rather well and I don’t want to waste it because of vomiting.”

“You’re the one who brought up the subject in the first place, asshole!”

“That I did.” Lemony moves to get out of his seat. “You want some wine? I packed some.”

“How many things did you pack? What’s next, a whole car?” Beatrice leans back, partly to be dramatic, and partly because she is tired as shit. “Also, sure.” 

Lemony brings out a bottle of wine and two glasses, and pours her some with a bitter smile. It’s the same smile reflected on her own face.

She raises her glass. “No body, no crime.” 

“No body, no crime.”

Their glasses hit with a soft _clink_.

-

The next day, they’re sprawled across a couch in the Snicket Manor (damn, Beatrice has probably spent more time here in the past week than she has since college). Lemony is reading an absurdly long book, only half-focused on the words themselves, while she absent-mindedly hums a country song that she heard on the radio yesterday and twirls a ribbon between her fingers.

“You know, reportedly one Esmé Genevieve took out a rather large life insurance policy a few days ago.”

Beatrice abandons the ribbon and turns toward Lemony. “So?”

“ _So_ the police think she did it. It’s perfect!”

“Nice.” Suddenly, a question comes to mind, and Beatrice frowns. “How exactly do you know this?”

“I engaged Harvey Mitchum in some polite small talk, and the topic of conversation ended up turning to the murder investigation he was undertaking. It was exhausting, but I have a naturally charming personality-”

She shoves him in the shoulder. “ _Bullshit!_ ”

Lemony falls sideways onto the couch, the book doing a series of impressive somersaults before landing squarely on his stomach. Despite this, he keeps talking. “So he ended up telling me a number of interesting facts.” 

He pauses, just now noticing his situation. “Can you help me get up? I think _Anna Karenina_ is crushing my organs.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [no body, no crime](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29777811) by [thecryptictaxi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecryptictaxi/pseuds/thecryptictaxi)




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